​Wanna sink on Titanic? Tourists to flock to China’s replica of iconic ship

An ambitious project by a Chinese company is set to give visitors their very own Titanic sinking experience. Opening in 2017, the $161 million replica will not only feature every little details of the ship, it’ll also recreate the crash.

For a fee of about $485
per night, you’re not just getting the journey – you’re also
getting the lavish dinners, the dancing and the entertainment.
Visitors will get to experience life as it was for the elite back
in the day, the People’s Daily Online reports. Luxury tickets,
however, will be more than 30 times that, at 100,000 yuan a
pop.

The ship will boast exact reproductions of everything, down to
the nuts and bolts. They will even get to experience the
authentic menu, exactly as it was in 1912. Some 20,000 sketches
were made to come up with the perfect recreation. The company
behind the project even consulted with film director James
Cameron’s staff, who had worked on the critically-acclaimed 1997
movie “Titanic.”

The exact dimensions of the original Titanic will also be
reproduced; it will measure 882 feet in length and be made of
50,000 tons of steel – as much, if not more, than is used to
build a real-life aircraft carrier. The company behind the
project consulted with the US firm responsible for building the
Titanic’s sister ship, the Olympic, back in 1910.

The replica is currently being built by a Chinese company, Qixing
Energy Investment Group, which first revealed the 1 billion yuan
plan in January 2014. But it has recently announced that a
limited number of 5,000 tickets will go on sale as soon as this
June.

“The Titanic is a great ship and we will revive it,” the
group’s chairman, Su Shaojun, was quoted as saying. “This new
construction is not only to commemorate it but to let people know
more about it. For people to know that when it sank the spirit of
love was exhibited as well as creating its legend.”

The group’s general manager, Huang Li, promised customers the
“trip of a lifetime” that will give them “memories
they will never forget.”

The company even got hold of British actor Bernard Hill, who
played the captain in James Cameron’s film, and invited him to
the project launch, where he attended dressed in full uniform.

The makers of the new Titanic claim they had more than just
tourists in mind. Some part of the proceeds from the tickets sold
will go toward a new Titanic fund dedicated to helping victims of
maritime tragedies around the world, the company says.

The curious will have to travel to China to see what it was like
for the luxury liner’s passengers when it sank in 1912; the ship
will be permanently docked on the Daying Qi river in Sichuan
province.

The new Titanic will also cost much more than the original. The
project’s $161 million price tag dwarfs the price of the original
ship, which cost 4.9 million pounds (about $7.7 million) to
build. But even when adjusting for a century of inflation, the
amount spent is still 50 percent more than on the ill-fated first
Titanic.